(coming soon)

Register Today to Attend the Grad and/or Greek Meeting in Atlanta
by Dana Hill
If you are planning to attend one or both meetings, but do not plan to stay at the Courtyard Buckhead, I still need your completed CCS Registration Form as soon as possible. You can fax or email it to me. If you are a "maybe", please send me an email so we can get an idea of attendance for this meeting.  Click here and here to view the agendas for the meetings.




Shooting Family Nights Is A Way to Get School Contracts A new marketing piece is now available on candidnet for use with photographing Family Nights at local schools.  As many of you heard during Clint Roe's school presentation during the OKC workshops, arranging a Family Night is a good way to establish relationships with local elementary schools who may already be under contract with another school photographer.  Shooting a Family Night can be a fund raiser for the school and give you, as the photographer, an opportunity to showcase your high quality work to the school so that when their school contract is up, you have a foothold in the school.

The School Night flyer and certificate page are designed to be customized with your dates, logos, etc. and then printed locally in the quantity you need.  Thanks Clint for the great idea!!

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September 30 Is the The Deadline To Modify Your Packages With Greeting Cards
As of 9/30, you will no longer be able to order the old 4x7 greeting cards.  All greeting cards (holiday, solid color and birth announcements) will be 4x8 in size instead of the existing 4x7.  This is a more industry standard size and allows for more caption area.  The styles of the birth announcements will change slightly and the style of solid color greeting cards will not change.  You now have the ability to edit all of your existing packages that contain greeting cards to include and/or edit with the new sizes, prices and styles.  You will find the new versions in "Package Set Up" under holiday greeting cards.

On 9/30, we will convert all existing greeting card packages to the new 4x8 size.  We will do this in the following way:

·       If the card has one of the styles we are keeping this will be automatically be converted to the same style in the 4x8 size.

·       If the card has a style that we did not keep, it will automatically be remapped to the Lined With Color style in the 4x8 size. 

Please review your packages with holiday greeting cards – If they contain styles other than Gold Border, Lined with Color, Snowflake, Snowman,or  Vintage, you must edit them to your preferred new style by 9/30 or they will automatically become the Lined With Color Style.

Click to enlarge

The New Holiday Greeting Cards
Ø       4x8 in size
Ø       $5.52 per 12 cards
Ø       $9.20 per 20 cards 

5 Old Styles Proved to be Popular!
We are bringing back 5 styles that were the most popular selling greeting cards.  They will be printed in 4x8 instead of 4x7.

Ø       Gold Border
Ø       Lined with Color
Ø       Snowflake
Ø       Snowman
Ø       Vintage

10 New Styles Expected to be Successful!
Ø       Peace                           
Ø       Red Textured
Ø       Red Swirl      
Ø       Candy Cane
Ø       Bows            
Ø       Icy Blue
Ø       Festive        
Ø       Light Bulbs
Ø       Lights         
Ø       Ornaments

If you need sample images of any greeting cards or additional copies of the holiday greeting cards flyer that you should have received in the past week, please email Blake Whitney.

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Confused about QEMS?
by Jaime McKissick

What is QEMS!?

QEMS stands for QuicPics Event Management System.  It is a program available to all CCS customers at NO COST.  QEMS is a multifaceted special events management system that allows it’s users to streamline many of the minor details in running a successful special events business and enables them to focus on booking new business, training photographers and building relationships with customers. 

What does it do?  QEMS can assist you in managing your employee’s schedules and pay rates.   It also provides a point of contact for your customers to book events on-line and keeps a calendar of your business’s upcoming obligations.  QEMS can also automatically email links to your customer informing them that their pictures are online as well as send reminder emails to let your customer know when an event is about to expire.  Sales report are also generated in QEMS that allow you to track the sales of an event by day, month or even year.  QEMS also keeps a record of your customer’s order history and can aid a great deal when dealing with customer service issues.
           
Many CCS customers who use QEMS attribute much of their success in the special events market to the abilities and time saving tools provided by this program.  If you would like to learn more about how to successfully integrate QEMS into your business please join us at the Greek Seminar in Atlanta, GA on October 12th.

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QEMS Email Enhancements

The new feature “Email Log in Prompt” is now available!  Here is how it works… you will go to edit group and scroll down to the bottom.  Click on Require email prompt.  This will prompt your customers for their email address on the qems retail portion BEFORE they see their groups events.  Once you choose that feature another option will pop up, “require email validation”.  If you do not choose this option, the customers will be prompted for their email but it will not be validated.  If you choose to have it validated, the customer will be given a message that they will be sent a link to the pictures via email to view their pictures.  If you have validation turned on and a returning customer enters an email address that is already in the system, they will be taken directly to the images and bypass verification.  If you send out online and expiration notices, the customers clicking on the link in their email will not be prompted for a password. 

Any email addresses that are entered, validated or not validated, are added as guests to the groups.  This means that they will receive any communication that you send to the groups members (Bulk email, online notification or expiration emails for that group).

View of Edit Group Page

Email Prompting on the retail website

QEMS Email Reports
After you send out thousands of emails, do you ever wonder how many of them are read?  Wonder no more!  The email report on the reports tab of the qems admin is now available.  This report shows you how many emails were sent for a group, how many bounced, how many distinct link clicks, and the percentage of members that clicked.  This is a good opportunity to monitor your groups with low percentages and work with the organization to get valid email addresses.
 
You now have the ability to choose which qems user will receive booking emails, activation, nightly and event summaries.

The booking and activation emails are set up on the Campus Setup page on the set up tab.  If you have different managers for different locations you can set the alert emails to go to the appropriate person.  In the past, you had no choice, it only went to the alert email address you had set up as your default.

The nightly and event summaries are set up on the site set up page.  Just click custom email defaults and choose the appropriate person.

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During the second week of 2006, January 9th and 10th to be exact, the CCS Winter Seminar will be taking place at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.  The CCS staff is already hard at work lining up guest speakers, planning an agenda, and checking out the winter landscape in Vegas for late night entertainment
 
Prior to the CCS meetings the Consumer Electronic Show will be taking over the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 5-8.  If you have never attended the CES you are in for a treat.  Just slightly overwhelming in its scope, the CES has long been the place to see tomorrow’s technologies today.  Whether it’s audio, video, gaming, digital imaging, home theater, wireless technology, or mobile electronics there is something at this show for everyone.  Come a day or two before the CCS meeting and spend some time roaming the expansive trade show halls testing out the technologies that interest you.    
 
The CES Show followed by the CCS Winter Seminar is a great double-header!   Plan now to attend.  Look for additional information in upcoming newsletters.

Sports: Plan Now And Reap The Rewards Later
Since Sports is a year-round market with the calendar dictating when most sport’s seasons occur it’s easy to get caught up in the marketing, shooting, and production of the current sports season without looking forward to upcoming seasons.  Your focus may be on the league you’re shooting this weekend, but who in your company is thinking about December and basketball; or, January and wrestling?
 
Sports sales, just like sport shoots, should be a year-round effort.  Taking the time to design your sales schedule together with your shooting schedule is something all sports photographers should be doing; not just for organizational purposes but to guarantee income down the road and to discover when you’ll have open dates for additional leagues you may book.
 
Shooting seasons and selling seasons aren’t going to change radically.  Let’s face it; there is no spring football that I’m aware of—either in youth sports or high school sports!  For the most part, leagues—no matter what sport—are always played in the same times of the year.  Keep this in mind as a rule of thumb: sales seasons should be running 4-6 months ahead of the shooting season.
 
For instance, when baseball and softball is in your viewfinder in March and April the sales effort should be taking aim at August and September booking and scheduling football, soccer, cheerleading, and other minor sports like cross country and field hockey in the high schools.  Additionally, when your cameras are trained on football and soccer in the Fall, your salesperson should be calling on baseball and spring soccer leagues.
 
Though it’s true that some leagues drag their feet making a decision on a photographer and wait until the week before league play begins to hire a photographer, most leagues want that decision out of the way months before league play begins.  In most cases, the early bird gets the contract!
 
The bottom line is: Have a sales plan.  Update your presentation materials, letters, and samples to reflect the new graphics and products that CCS is offering.  Carefully lay out a plan of attack using a wall calendar as your guide and keep the calendar in view as a constant reminder of what needs to happen.

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Deadline is Wednesday, September 28th at 5PM CST to Order Digital Sports Envelopes, Flyers, and Posters

Lab Service Times for the week of August 14th - August 20th
by Bo Lewis